Bad Press for Roman Catholics
Last weekend saw Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day TV spectacular to raise millions of pounds for the alleviation of poverty principally in Africa, but also within the UK. Community groups including schools engage in all kinds of fun activities to generate revenue for this charity and its work. This year however, the Roman Catholic Church tried to dissuade children in Catholic schools from participating in the event by claiming that Comic Relief was funding abortion programmes. This turned out to be absolutely untrue and the Church somewhat shamefacedly allowed its children to take part. But it was a reminder of the power that the Church exerts in the community and its ability to jump to wrong conclusions.
This ability throughout history was wonderfully illustrated in the BBCTV’s Wednesday night reconstruction of the trial of Galileo in 1633. Galileo had been forbidden by the Church to advance Copernicus’s views, but thought he had found a creative way around the situation by publishing a dialogue between three people, one advocating Copernican science, one contesting it, and the third clearly representing the Church. Nevertheless, the idea that the sun and not the earth was the centre of the universe remained anathema to the teachings of the Church which held that God had created the earth, and if there was any motion in the planets, this was due to God deciding to put things into motion, and certainly not due to any natural or scientific law. The TV programme followed Galileo through his trial, and showed how the Inquisition, even though some of its members accepted the truth of Galileo’s findings, found it necessary for the sake of the Church’s authority, to make him recant of his assertions. It would be another two hundred years before people could read the dialogue for themselves.
The Roman Catholic Church has of course, apologised since for its error of judgement over Galileo. One would think it would learn lessons from history and be more cautious in telling the faithful not to read certain literary and scientific works. But no, on the same day that the Galileo programmed was aired in the UK, Cardinal Bertone, formerly an official in the Vatican’s office on doctrinal orthodoxy and now Archbishop of Genoa, urged Catholics neither to read nor buy Dan Brown’s runaway best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. Insisting that the novel is profoundly anti-Catholic the Cardinal was aghast that even Catholic bookshops are stocking it. The work certainly highlights the Church’s penchant for harbouring powerful secret societies, but one suspects that its chief offence is in its allusions to the ancient myth that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that their descendants live on in our day. This makes for a highly entertaining story about the nature and location of the Holy Grail, but one has not noticed large numbers of Christians agitating for the myth to be included in the Nicene Creed. Adult Christians are perfectly capable of forming a view on such matters. It is tragic that there remain Church leaders who regard it as their duty to protect people by censoring or controlling their reading matter.
As the issue of abortion began the week, so it ended the week when Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor made an ill-judged foray into British politics in the run-up to the General Election in May. Announcing that the Labour Party could no longer rely on the traditional Catholic vote, he heaped praise on Michael Howard, the Tory Leader, for saying that he would vote for the legal time in which it is now possible to seek an abortion to be reduced to 20 weeks. The Cardinal’s comments appeared inept because in the British political system, weighty matters like abortion have never been regarded as party-political issues, but are voted upon by parliamentarians, not on party lines, but on the basis of personal conscience. The Cardinal would subsequently attempt to clarify his views by insisting that he was not trying to make abortion a party political issue, but rather arguing that Britain might benefit from American styled politics where, as in the recent Bush/Kerry election, the issue of abortion received a good public airing. This was rather a case of ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ with citizens quick to point out, that American styled politics so heavily influenced by conservative religious extremism, would not fare well with either the great British public, nor its political system.
So all in all, the Roman Catholic Church attracted to itself a lot of bad press this week.
This ability throughout history was wonderfully illustrated in the BBCTV’s Wednesday night reconstruction of the trial of Galileo in 1633. Galileo had been forbidden by the Church to advance Copernicus’s views, but thought he had found a creative way around the situation by publishing a dialogue between three people, one advocating Copernican science, one contesting it, and the third clearly representing the Church. Nevertheless, the idea that the sun and not the earth was the centre of the universe remained anathema to the teachings of the Church which held that God had created the earth, and if there was any motion in the planets, this was due to God deciding to put things into motion, and certainly not due to any natural or scientific law. The TV programme followed Galileo through his trial, and showed how the Inquisition, even though some of its members accepted the truth of Galileo’s findings, found it necessary for the sake of the Church’s authority, to make him recant of his assertions. It would be another two hundred years before people could read the dialogue for themselves.
The Roman Catholic Church has of course, apologised since for its error of judgement over Galileo. One would think it would learn lessons from history and be more cautious in telling the faithful not to read certain literary and scientific works. But no, on the same day that the Galileo programmed was aired in the UK, Cardinal Bertone, formerly an official in the Vatican’s office on doctrinal orthodoxy and now Archbishop of Genoa, urged Catholics neither to read nor buy Dan Brown’s runaway best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. Insisting that the novel is profoundly anti-Catholic the Cardinal was aghast that even Catholic bookshops are stocking it. The work certainly highlights the Church’s penchant for harbouring powerful secret societies, but one suspects that its chief offence is in its allusions to the ancient myth that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that their descendants live on in our day. This makes for a highly entertaining story about the nature and location of the Holy Grail, but one has not noticed large numbers of Christians agitating for the myth to be included in the Nicene Creed. Adult Christians are perfectly capable of forming a view on such matters. It is tragic that there remain Church leaders who regard it as their duty to protect people by censoring or controlling their reading matter.
As the issue of abortion began the week, so it ended the week when Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor made an ill-judged foray into British politics in the run-up to the General Election in May. Announcing that the Labour Party could no longer rely on the traditional Catholic vote, he heaped praise on Michael Howard, the Tory Leader, for saying that he would vote for the legal time in which it is now possible to seek an abortion to be reduced to 20 weeks. The Cardinal’s comments appeared inept because in the British political system, weighty matters like abortion have never been regarded as party-political issues, but are voted upon by parliamentarians, not on party lines, but on the basis of personal conscience. The Cardinal would subsequently attempt to clarify his views by insisting that he was not trying to make abortion a party political issue, but rather arguing that Britain might benefit from American styled politics where, as in the recent Bush/Kerry election, the issue of abortion received a good public airing. This was rather a case of ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ with citizens quick to point out, that American styled politics so heavily influenced by conservative religious extremism, would not fare well with either the great British public, nor its political system.
So all in all, the Roman Catholic Church attracted to itself a lot of bad press this week.
posted by MichaelElliott @ 5:51 AM
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